Thousand-year-old 'lost' pyramid city uncovered in the heart of Mexico using lasers had as many buildings as modern Manhattan

• Experts used lasers to send beams of light from an aircraft to the ground below to build up a map of the area

• They discovered a lost pyramid city known as Angamuco built by the Purépecha, rivals to the Aztecs

• The city was more than double the size of Tzintzuntzan, the culture's capital, at 10 square miles (26 sq km)

• It contained 40,000 building foundations which is roughly the same as on the island of Manhattan

In Mexico, a remarkable discovery was made that took the globe by storm. An ancient civilisation lived in this location, according to the archaeologist team conducting the digs, and the metropolis may have had as many buildings as modern-day Manhattan.

The finding was uncovered west of Mexico City, near the metropolis of Morelia, where an old city dating back to 900 AD appears to be located.

It was initially inhabited by the Purepecha culture. They are well-known for being the Aztecs’ adversaries.

The city was initially built on thousands of years old lava flow and covered an area of more than 16 square miles.

The findings, which were announced during the 2018 AAAS Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas, have implications for understanding the region’s history of migration, land use and conservation and even early climate changes, participants said. 

Using airborne mapping, researchers are discovering new archaeological sites that show pre-Columbian Mesoamerica was 'significantly more densely populated at the time of European contact' than previously thought. 

Professor Fisher pointed to a previous city he has studied in the Mosquitia Rainforest of Honduras.

Thousands of Mayan people lived in complex cities with central plazas, pyramids, reservoirs, canals and terraced farmlands in this area 1,000 to 2,000 years ago.

Using Light Detection and Ranging scanning, the team was able to determine how many structures existed in the city in the first place, as well as how huge they could have been. The data were quickly delivered to them, and they were astounded, to say the least, to learn that over 40,000 buildings may have been constructed here in ancient times.

The city of Angamuco was discovered in 2007, but no one expected it to be as large or modern as it was.

Sometime in the 1530s, Europeans discovered these cities and brought new diseases that killed an estimated nine out of 10 people of the city’s residents within a generation, Professor Fisher said.

There is evidence that the cities’ remaining residents ritually de-sanctified their religious sites before abandoning them, which were subsequently forgotten and hidden by dense tropical forests.

Documenting these sites now is critical, because 'accelerating rates of global change are threatening our patrimony in ways we’ve never seen before,' Professor Fisher added.

Researchers announced the groundbreaking discovery of more than 60,000 previously unknown structures including pyramids, palaces, and causeways, that once made up a massive pre-Columbian civilization.

To uncover the megalopolis, the team used Lidar to look beneath the forest canopy in northern Peten - an area close to already-known Mayan cities.

The discovery suggests that Central America supported a civilization that was, at its peak 1,500 years ago, more advanced than ancient Greek and Chinese cultures.

The landscape may have been home to up to 15 million individuals and the abundance of defensive walls, ramparts and fortresses suggests that warfare was rife throughout their existence and not just at the end.